Robert L. Terrell

Senator Barack Obama’s unprecedented campaign to become President of the United States is providing numerous insights into the minds of white Americans, and the character of life in this multiracial society. First off, I am pleased to note that his success so far is largely due to strong support from whites in every section of the nation, including the old slave-holding regions south of the Mason-Dixon Line. This suggests the “New South,” which moderates and liberals from the region have been touting for decades, has finally arrived.

The long term ramifications of this welcome development portends good things for the nation’s future because it indicates that many of the deeply entrenched prejudices that have tragically undermined the best interests of the region and the nation since the end of Radical Reconstruction are collapsing. Thus, the racist, cynical manipulations at the root of the Republican Party’s so-called “Southern Strategy” are probably going to prove ineffective, if not futile and counterproductive, from this point forward. This fact alone suggests that the United States is headed for a fundamental shift in its domestic political paradigm. As a result, many social and political options that have been thwarted by the organized, consistent, barely concealed, racism that serves as the foundation of the Republican Party’s national coalition is on the way out. If nothing else, Obama’s extraordinary victory in the Iowa phase of the Democratic Party’s nominating process showed that an emergent majority of the nation’s whites have moved beyond the traditional divide-and-conquer tactics that have been used to oppress people of color, and isolate progressive whites on the sideline of the nation’s political culture.

Nonetheless, the current phase of Senator Obama’s long, strange, but undeniably inspiring, journey toward the oval office located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, indicates that much important work remains to be done regarding the foul and oppressive legacy of white racism. This is being made patently apparent via the primaries in which, poorly educated, low income whites, are acting out in racist ways when they show up at ballot booths. The barely concealed hostility and contempt that this group is expressing toward Obama via their votes and exit interview commentaries exposes one of the nation’s most important dirty secrets: a notable segment of the white community in this nation is racist in ways which defy logic, common sense and their own best interests. My hope is that judges, legislators, educators, and other representatives of government will begin to acknowledge, and firmly repudiate, the racist inclinations of this group as the nation moves forward. The point to be understood is that the racism that this group is proudly advocating and practicing via their votes in the Democratic and Republican primaries is not restricted to election days.

It is also operative on a daily basis in every aspect of society where such people are permitted to act on their prejudices. Thus, it is no longer possible to deny the ramification of their destructive impact in schools, on juries, in law enforcement, at financial institutions, etc. We will know that the United States has finally emerged from the swamp of ignorance, hostility, mediocrity and systematized oppression which characterizes such an awesomely large segment of this nation’s culture and social order, when journalists, scholars, judges, and others responsible for public order, economic opportunity and social justice, begin to regularly and consistently acknowledge and discuss white racism with the same level of intensity and outrage that they normally bestow on the so-called “black underclass.”